There are normally two points of emphasis in the design of base station antennae for modern wireless communications, namely the operating bandwidth and the gain. Base station antennae with wider bandwidth can cover more frequency channels, increase the channel capacity, and enhance manufacturing tolerances. On the other hand, constructing antenna arrays is the simplest and an effective way to increase the gain. If the gain of the array element increases by 3 dB, for the same overall gain, the total number of array elements can be reduced by half, thus reducing the array antenna size. Therefore, it is important to provide an antenna element with wideband and high gain characteristics. There are several known techniques for enhancing bandwidth and gain. However, most of such techniques cannot be used at the same time. In addition, even if the antenna element is wideband and high gain at the same time, the structure is usually very complicated or bulky.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide an antenna and an antenna array in which the aforesaid shortcomings are mitigated or at least to provide a useful alternative to the trade and public.